Budgeting App Review: Simplifi Brings Streamlined Experience, Robust Budgeting Tools

Budgeting apps have become a popular way to track spending and savings habits over the past few years. They promise convenience and simplicity when it comes to staying on top of your money, and Simplifi by Quicken delivers.

Simplifi lets users easily keep tabs on their cash and investment accounts by connecting from its network of 14,000 financial institutions in a painless, elegant way. Users can track income, expenses, bills and returns for multiple accounts in one place. And, unique to this budgeting app, Simplifi even tracks shopping refunds to make sure they come through: The app sends a notification when money is refunded, and it also sends one when a refund is overdue, reminding users to follow up and track down their cash.

Financial giant Quicken launched the Simplifi app in early 2020, and it’s already making waves as a great personal financial management tool with best-in-class support from an industry leader. Simplifi users can create watchlists to monitor spending across a combination of categories, in areas like fast food or groceries. They can set up custom notifications for transactions, bills, payroll deposits and more. They can even create multiple savings goals for both short-term and long-term financial planning and track their progress.

In addition, Simplifi’s engaging app, designed for mobile but also available on the web, comes with access to live support and other resources.

In this review, we’ll explain Simplifi’s key features and pricing, plus what makes it stand apart from the competition. Bottom line: Simplifi is a great tool for those looking to manage their spending, maximize their savings, keep their bills and subscriptions in check and see all of their finances in one place. Its beautiful design has earned a cornucopia of great reviews on both news sites and app stores, and for good reason. It’s no surprise that Simplifi is quickly becoming one of the most popular budgeting tools available.

All information on pricing and fees is current as of Jan. 10, 2022.

Simplifi and Your Money

Simplifi is a personal finance management app that lets users stay on top of their finances without having to watch every penny. It’s designed to help anybody set clear financial goals for themselves no matter how they choose to spend their money. With automation that’s easy, simple and powerful, users only have to spend a couple of minutes reviewing their budget each week.

Here are just a few of the features that stood out as unique in the field of personal finance management apps:

• Cash-flow projections and monthly spending checkpoints.
• Fully customizable alerts for tracking goals, bills and more.
• Automatic notifications of unusual activity, with parameters that users can set for themselves.
• Automatic monthly budgets based on real income and expenses, with a simple process to modify those budgets as the need arises.

Thanks to Simplifi’s seamless integration with bill-paying sites and financial institutions, users can connect and track all of their accounts in one place.

This is especially important given the recent explosion of financial options. For savvy investors with multiple checking and savings accounts, plus investment accounts through various brokerage platforms and retirement plans, Simplifi can connect to those accounts and import all of that data into one place. Users can see all of their account balances and transactions just by logging into Simplifi through either the mobile app or a desktop web browser.

Photo credit: Simplifi by Quicken

Simplifi Spending Plan

Simplifi is an all-in-one solution that helps with budgeting, income tracking, expense monitoring and projecting cash flow, as well as setting and tracking specific savings goals over time. The app also allows users to customize their dashboards, so they can prioritize the insights that are most valuable to their own financial situation.

Within the app, Simplifi’s Spending Plan provides a flexible budget that’s automatically calculated based on income, regular bills and subscriptions. Users can also add their own anticipated income and expenses, distinguishing between essential outlays (like rent and utilities) and discretionary ones (like streaming subscriptions).

The Simplifi dashboard makes it easy to see how much money will be left over in a particular month, with an updated calculation of the remaining spending cash per day. With on-demand insight, Simplifi users can buy anything from self-help books to that vegetable chopper on TikTok, knowing it’s in their budget. Users can also create specific financial goals (like saving a certain amount of money or making extra payments on a loan). Simplifi will set that money aside each month, making sure it’s included in the Spending Plan.

At this time, users can only connect to accounts at U.S. banks and financial institutions. Automatic connections to foreign banks aren’t supported, but those accounts can still be added manually.

Photo credit: Simplifi by Quicken

Security

When users link their bank and brokerage accounts to the Simplifi app, account data is transmitted using 256-bit encryption. This is widely considered the standard when it comes to protecting data in transit—in fact, it’s the same encryption used by most banks and financial institutions to protect their own data.

Pricing

The Simplifi app currently comes with a 30-day free trial, after which users can pay $5.99 per month or $47.99 per year—paying annually represents over 30% in savings.

Either way, there are no hidden fees, in-app purchases or ads. What you see is what you get.

Access and Ratings

Quicken’s Simplifi app lets users access their financial information anywhere they have an internet connection, whether through the mobile app or on a desktop web browser. For questions, Simplifi provides a number of online resources, including a community forum, where users can get help on specific issues or trade tips and tricks, but the app also provides individual service from live coaches via phone or chat—a great, unexpected benefit from a mobile app.

With solid customer reviews, including 4.2 stars on the iTunes App Store, Simplifi has also been recognized as best in class by numerous publications, including Wirecutter, PC Magazine, Fast Company and Investopedia.

And that’s just for Simplifi—the app’s parent company, Quicken, is a behemoth in its own right, with other products regularly receiving top marks in their respective categories.

Pros

• Users get all their financial data in one place
• Online published resources to learn how to use the app
• Live coaches available to provide tutorials and help troubleshoot problems
• Set savings goals, track expenses and monitor shopping refunds

Cons

• Users can’t move money between accounts inside the app
• Free 30-day trial, after which the app costs $5.99 per month (or $47.99 per year if billed annually)

How Simplifi Stacks Up

Unlike some personal financial apps, Simplifi isn’t free to use, but it also doesn’t serve up ads that would mar the clean lines of its modern design or slow down its mercury-quick performance. The app offers an open, intuitive interface that users can customize to link all of their accounts from different financial institutions in one place, displaying their financial data in an easy-to-view format. This helps users get the insights they need about their overall financial situation, track accounts and spending, create budgets and measure long-term savings goals over time.

For those who might want to try the app before committing to a subscription, Simplifi offers a free 30-day trial.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Is Simplifi’s app safe?

The app uses 256-bit encryption when transmitting customer data. This is considered the standard and is used by most banks and other financial institutions.

Does Simplifi work with Quicken?

While Simplifi is owned by Quicken, the app does not integrate directly with Quicken, nor is it able to read data imported from a Quicken file.

How does Simplifi connect to a bank?

When a user downloads Simplifi, they select an institution where they have an account and enter the login credentials they use to access their account online. Simplifi then securely downloads all of the user’s account data from the bank, including data about previous transactions. All data is transmitted using 256-bit encryption—the same level used by most banks and brokerage platforms.

Information provided on Forbes Advisor is for educational purposes only. Your financial situation is unique and the products and services we review may not be right for your circumstances. We do not offer financial advice, advisory or brokerage services, nor do we recommend or advise individuals or to buy or sell particular stocks or securities. Performance information may have changed since the time of publication. Past performance is not indicative of future results.